What's for Dinner?

It is meetings, meetings, and more meetings for me this week, so I decided to use the old trusty Crock-Pot today. Spent a little bit of time in the kitchen this morning, and came home this evening to a heavenly-smelling house and this:

Good old-fashioned pot roast with potatoes, peppers, and onions! Mr. P came in the house a few minutes after me, with his nose in the air just sniffing away. He now thinks I'm the bomb for making such an awesome dinner! : )

Weekend Wrap Up

(This is not at my house, but I do wish it was!)

Friday Night

Girls night in for me…cooked up a yummy dinner, caught up on my blog reading, and did some school work.

Saturday

Thanks to his late night, Mr. P slept in a little bit, but I got up and worked on more school work. My dining room table is now Back to School Central and it looks like this:

However, I have a system where I can clear everything off in an organized manner in 5 minutes or less when we need to eat dinner at the table.

I also found my planner for the school year. I’m very picky about this and it usually takes me forever to find one that I like. I actually found the one I liked best at Office Depot. The cover is very plain, but I will be adding a monogram decal to it ASAP.

Like I said, I have specific needs in a planner. It must have monthly, as well as weekly calendars. I also need plenty of room to write down daily appointments and events, but I don't like the hour by hour daily planners. Here's a sneak peak at it-

Monthly Calendar

 

Weekly Calendar

It is also already tabbed (saves me some trouble) and has a lot of little extras that I like. I also like the brown and green stripes at the top of each page.

We went to a benefit cornhole tournament (it was very hot!) on Saturday afternoon, and followed it by having dinner with friends at Kansai, the local Japanese steakhouse. I have some yummy leftovers for lunch on Monday now!

Sunday

Mr. P had to work (a very rare occurrence on a Sunday) and I decided to have a lazy Sunday morning. He left around 6:30, so I stayed up after he left, and settled in with my coffee and my Nook.

Mid-morning, I decided to do something useful, so I made some yummy Strawberry Pecan Bread. 

It was the first time I had tried this recipe and it tasted good, but as you can see from the picture the middle of the bread fell. No idea why…I’m sure it’s not the recipe, I probably did something wrong! The recipe called for self-rising flour and all I had was all-purpose, so I probably messed up the conversions/amounts when I added the baking powder and salt. I was multiplying fractions in my head when I probably should have been using a pencil and paper or better yet a calculator. Oh well, it still tasted great! I also made some chicken salad (recipe to follow) to have on hand for lunches this week.

After my kitchen time, I filled in my new planner with all of the upcoming events this school year…yes, I am a geek because I absolutely love doing this! After that, I took a quick run to the grocery store.

It’s been a while since I posted a Sunday Supper recipe, but we had spaghetti for dinner, which is pretty basic fare. So I will give you my chicken salad recipe, which is the one that Mama uses. She got it from a little restaurant in Nashville called The Picnic Café. It is run by two of Mama’s high school classmates and they are so sweet when you come in for a visit. You can order their cookbook and I highly recommend it. This is where Mama got the chicken salad recipe along with a whole bunch of other good Southern stuff!

Picnic Chicken Salad

3 cups white chicken breast, chopped

¾ cup celery, chopped

3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

1 tablespoon parsley, chopped

½ teaspoon celery seed

1/3 teaspoon black pepper

Salt to taste

1 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise (The recipe says do not substitute but if you prefer Duke’s or Kraft, go right ahead-to each her own!)

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients. Chill. Serve as a sandwich spread or as a salad on lettuce or stuffed into a tomato.

It has been thundering, lightning and raining for about two hours now and the sound is wonderful. We’ve had about two weeks of hot, muggy weather with no rain-unless you count a random little shower that only serves to make it feel worse outside. The temperature has already dropped about 15 degrees. Let’s hope that it stays that way for a while!

How was your weekend?

Summer Fun

Warning: Long post to follow…I hope that you will stick with me to the end! : )

Hello dear bloggy friends! What have you been up to this summer? I hope that you are staying cool, wherever you are and whatever you are doing because it is certainly a H-O-T summer!!! I’m sitting here drinking some of Christy Jordan’s Home Brew IcedCoffee as I write this, and it’s very refreshing. I highly recommend giving it a try. 

I have to start with this pic of the flowers I picked in our field this afternoon. Just some wildflowers, but when I put them in a quart jar with a ribbon it looks cute, summery, and country all rolled into one!

I took the day off today and had a completely relaxing day-it has been awesome! I’m not one for sleeping in, so I got up at my regular time but I spent some quality time this morning with a cup of coffee and my book. I’ve also caught up on some shows that I had saved on the DVR. I haven’t been a complete slug though; I’ve done some laundry, straightened up the house, and worked on some school stuff. Mr. P is working late (very late!) tonight, so I have the evening to myself too. I can’t remember the last time that I had a Friday night all to myself. One thing that I haven’t done today is catch up on my blog reading, so that is definitely on the agenda for tonight.

Last week, Mr. P and I spent 4 days here at Barren River Lake with two other families. It was simply gorgeous! 

We went down on Thursday morning and the rest of the group didn’t arrive until Friday afternoon, so we had some time to ourselves. It was the first time that Mr. P had stayed in the area in years and my first time ever, so we had a lot of fun going exploring. I also had some quality time under a shade tree with a glass of sweet tea and my Nook!

After we had made the reservations and planned the long weekend, we realized that it was also the opening weekend for Harry Potter. So Mr. P reserved tickets for a midnight showing in one of the little towns near Barren and we were able to go see the movie on Thursday night/Friday morning. Love, love, loved the movie and I’m a little sad to see it all end.

On Thursday night before our little movie excursion, we had dinner at the lodge. I kept it light and just had the soup and salad bar. On the salad bar, they had the best cucumber and tomato salad that I have ever had. I’m now obsessed with finding a recipe for it! It was slightly creamy so it must have mayo or salad dressing in it, and it also had dill, onion, and vinegar. Does anyone have a recipe that sounds like this? I would love to have it if you do. I found one that sounds pretty good on cooks.com but if someone has a tried and true recipe I would love to give it a try.

We ate pretty well on our weekend-as we always do! Whenever we get together with friends, we just love to cook up big meals. Mr. P smoked another pork roast (it was awesome as always) and I made corn salad. I also brought some Homemade CinnaBuns for breakfast one morning. Some other food staples from the weekend were homemade pimento cheese, baked beans, sausage pinwheels, and pasta salad. We also had a night where we roasted hot dogs and had s’mores-yummy, yummy!

Besides eating and reading under a shade tree, we also went boating, rode bikes, and took some long walks. All in all, it was a great trip!

My family members who were in the horrible car accident are doing much better. Everyone is home now and recovering at a good pace. E., the 16 year-old had another surgery today but she should be back home in a couple of days. There is some nerve damage in her arm, so the surgeon is taking some nerve from her leg and putting it in her arm. Thanks to everyone for their prayers-each and every one of them is greatly appreciated!

We had VBS at church a couple of weeks ago and on the last night we took the kids on a hayride to a neighboring farm. I made friends with Dolly the Llama-hee hee!

Has anyone read any novels by Kristin Hannah? I saw this book when I was browsing on B & N today and it looked good, so I downloaded it. Her other novels looked pretty good too…

Before I sign off, I need to introduce you the newest member of our family. Back in the spring, my in-laws had to put their beloved dog down. A couple of months later, they went to the shelter and adopted this adorable pup who they named Duchess. Now many people may think that she is named for Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge but they actually chose the name because their other dog was named Duke so they thought that Duchess would go well with Duke. She is so cute and energetic. The other day, she entertained herself on the front porch for over an hour by playing with a rock. Seriously. Just a rock, that’s all. Of course, I was entertained just watching her play with a rock, so maybe I shouldn’t judge… 

Here are a couple of pictures of her cuteness…

Playing with my niece Katie 

Watching the world go by from atop a hay bale...how cute is that?? 

I can't post pictures of Miss Duchess if I don't include Miss Sunny too...she'll be jealous if she finds out! Here she is down at the pond with us on a Sunday afternoon.

Other things on the horizon for us-school starts in two weeks (yikes!), Mr. P is on a big bridge project right now, and we have a family reunion next week. Busy times, busy times…

I apologize for the complete and total randomness of this post-I was really all over the map, wasn't I? And if you are still reading this, thanks for sticking with me to the end!

TPP

Family Update

Thanks to everyone for your prayers for my family. Everyone is improving slowly each day, and so far no one has had any setbacks. One cousin has been released from the hospital, and my other cousin and my uncle should be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital by the end of this week. They all have a long road ahead of them, but should all recover in due time.

In addition to staying in close touch with my family, we've been busy with work and at church with VBS. Mr. P is on a new project, so he's putting in longer hours and it's t-minus one month until school starts for me, so things are getting busy again at school. 

Has anyone else been following Will and Kate's North American tour? I certainly have! I've really enjoyed seeing all the reports about their different activities and of course I love, love, love seeing what Kate is wearing. The blog What Kate Wore always has great pictures the royal couple and details about her outfits. 

That's about all the news there is to report from the Putter house. I promise a more interesting post soon! : )

Have a great day!

TPP

Prayers Needed

Well dear bloggers, it has not been the best weekend for my family. On Friday afternoon, my uncle and two cousins were on the way from Nashville to Atlanta to visit my aunt for the weekend. They were involved in a terrible accident on I-24 outside of Nashville and had to be life-flighted to the trauma center at Vanderbilt. They are all 3 in stable but serious condition with many injuries. 

My uncle has a broken clavicle, a broken wrist, broken ribs and a punctured lung. He had a rough day yesterday as both lungs collapsed, but he is doing a little better now. My 21 year old cousin has a hematoma and a large gash on her head, a broken wrist and a C5 vertebrae injury. Luckily, when she was about a year old she had a shunt put in her brain for hydrocephalus and still has the shunt today. The shunt began draining the hematoma and saved her from having further treatment for that. Isn't that amazing? My 16 year old cousin has a C2 vertebrae injury and had a halo put in yesterday for that. She also has a severely broken arm and will have surgery on it today. 

Mr. P and I are heading down to Nashville after church today to go see my family. I got up early this morning and baked some of my grandmother's banana nut bread for them,and I'm going to put in a package of goodies for all of our family members taking turns at the hospital. I know that the hospital food gets old, and this is such a comfort food for all of us. Since my grandmother can't be at the hospital with our family (she passed away several years ago), I thought that some of her banana bread might bring everyone some comfort.

Please keep my family in my prayers.